In the continuing advancements in identification and recovery of natural resources, such as oil and natural gas trapped in underground formations, many companies use computer models of the underground formation. Particular models look forward in time (i.e., the model predicts formation response to future actions such as hydrocarbon removal and/or secondary recovery techniques), and yet other models look backward in time (i.e., the models estimate past characteristics of the underground formation in geologic time, for example hundreds of thousands or millions of years in the past).
In order extract useful information from the models, in many cases the values of multiple characteristics need to be simultaneously analyzed visually. However, two-dimensional display devices of most computer systems do not lend themselves well to simultaneous display of more than two or three parameters at any one time. Even projecting a three-dimensional graph onto the two-dimensional display device has limitations.
Thus, any advance in the synthesis and visualization of data would provide a competitive advantage in the market place.